


We will meet again.

by TooManyBooksToRead



Category: Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi | Spirited Away, 君の名は。| Kimi no Na wa. | Your Name.
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, F/M, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-23
Updated: 2020-03-23
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:00:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23285914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TooManyBooksToRead/pseuds/TooManyBooksToRead
Summary: They find each other again, they always do.
Relationships: Haku | Nigihayami Kohakunushi/Ogino Chihiro, Miyamizu Mitsuha/Tachibana Taki
Comments: 5
Kudos: 59





	We will meet again.

It starts with a promise.

That’s a lie. It really starts with a girl and a river.

The shoe that brings them together and the names that tie them to each other.

****

**_Musubi._ **

There are tears and the rush of the wind as they fall through the endless sky, the giddy feeling of shared laughter. Relishing that they were _together, they’d found each other._

There is the lingering feeling of her hand in his as he ushers her away. The echoes of their promise in the wind, the names that bind them flowing freely, but not carelessly never again, from their lips.

He remains until he is sure she has passed through the tunnel, she doesn’t look back and has no way to know this. Only then does he turn away, there is much to do if he wishes to see her again, and oh how his heart sings for that moment.

She will not remember him, he knows this. It will not be the same as before but it will be everything he hopes. For now, he has a meeting and an old Sorceress to attend to.  
  


_Don’t you see? It’s called… love..._

It takes him much too long to be able to fulfil his promise. He is happy to know she has lived in his absence; that the lack of her memories has not kept her from finding joy. 

She sees him by the riverbank, just as much like their first meeting as it is different. And even though she doesn’t remember him he can see the glimmer of recognition in her eyes, the way they’ve been drawn together again like a river flowing into the ocean.

She is overwhelmed by emotion, by feelings she doesn’t know how to name, a longing she did not realize was there until it is gone and his name falls from her lips, “Kohaku,” she murmurs as naturally as the river beside them flows.

“Chihiro,” he says her name like a prayer reaching for her hands.

She is pulled under the surface by happiness she can’t quite know the reason for, and she cries into the arms of this familiar stranger by the riverside.

_Nothing that happens, is ever forgotten, even if you can’t remember it._

****

**_Musubi._ **

But their time is cut much too short, moments like the one in the riverside stolen away throughout the years, always with the same promise on their lips as they are forced to part.

When she goes, a part of him does too. After all, they are tied together, intrinsically as much a part of the other as they are of themselves.

He follows her of course, or maybe she draws him to her like she always did. But he sheds his skin and forgets. Following her into the unknown he thinks _someone has to take care of her_. And even reborn as a mortal the ghost of her lingers with him.

_Somedays, I wake up crying without knowing why._

She dreams a lot, of leaving Itomori and seeking _more_ out in the world. Of looming majestic landscapes that she could never hope to capture on paper, fading into nothingness with the light of day, of green eyes and dark hair and a hand in hers.

For all that it may make her ashamed to be seen by her classmates, she enjoys the upkeep of the temple, something is soothing about the labour, a constant in her life that she finds comforting rather than stifling. But even then the smallness of her world is constrictive, she eagerly waits for university and longs for something out there.

The first time she switches with the boy from Tokyo there is an unexplainable sadness in her chest, recognizable even through the embarrassment of what he did in her place. It remains even through the frantic scramble to lay ground rules and keep their lives in order. _Nothing is ever forgotten_ she thinks – like an idea dragged from the deepest part of her subconscious – _even if you can’t remember it_. Something about that gives her strength, even as the memories fade.

_They are like time itself. Fitting together and taking shape, twisting and tangling. Sometimes they unwind, break and knit back together again and that is time._

He finds the idea of Musubi beautiful.

“When something becomes a part of someone it is a union. It is bound to their soul.” Mitsuha’s grandmother tells them.

Something in him resonates with that, the same way it does with the current of a river and the shape of a name he can’t quite remember. He looks down at Mitsuha’s hand and can almost swear he sees a thread binding her to something and when he lays the _kuchikamisake_ at the feet of the relic he can’t help but feel he’s leaving a part of him behind with that half of her.

When he wakes up back in his body he is crying.

On the day of the date, Mitsuha finds herself inexplicably crying.

_Promise?_

Somedays he wakes with a void in his very being, an emptiness he can’t explain choking him from the inside out until he’s hollow and cold, like a statue made of ice. He can’t help but notice those days have happened less and less since he met Mitsuha.

Standing on the bridge as the sun sets he feels an urge – certainly not for the first time – to call her, this time he acts on it.

His call never goes through.

The shadow of her sleepy little town follows him even as the switches stop happening. He feels the void much more pointedly after that.

_The only thing that remains when I wake, is a feeling of loss that lingers for a long time._

  
  


#  **Miyamizu Mitsuha**

The name stares back at him from the pages of the victims' record and he can feel something within him shatter.

He reads about Itomori for hours after that, anything he can get his hands on, to see if it was real of he was simply deluding himself. He needs to know if…

He startles. What was her name? he doesn’t remember it.

He feels the emptiness, the void consuming him but he also feels like the floor has been taken out from under him. Aimless, as though someone has stolen something very dear from him. _Why can’t he remember her name?_

He remembers the threads, Musubi, and follows them back to the relic.

The river has grown, water rising with the rainy season until it is a ring around the shrine and wading through it feels like coming home. He holds his breath until he’s gotten to the other side although he’s not quite sure why.

And seeing the flasks of _kuchikamisake_ there feels like crying as he falls through the sky, an immense sense of relief that _it was real_ as he holds half of her in his hands.

He knows names are important, and wishes again that he could remember hers. 

He prays for a chance and takes a drink.

_Promise._

**_Musubi._ **

There are colours and sounds, all achingly familiar yet undeniably strange, and a thread – hers, made by her hand, filled with her power – binding him to her across time and death itself but he _can’t reach her. Mitsuha can’t hear him and he can’t save her._

He opens his eyes. But they aren’t his, they are Mitsuha’s eyes and he _still has a chance._

_That’s how Yubaba controls you… by stealing your name_

Mitsuha wakes up laying on the damp stone, she can’t understand why Taki would be here of all places but then she climbs to the top and watches. Itomori isn’t there.

She sinks to her knees, she’s gonna die. Scratch that she already died.

Irrationally she finds herself thinking back to yesterday when she went to Tokyo to try to find him. The lack of recognition still stings, but she can remember him asking her name, can remember giving him her hair tie.

She looks up. He’s here. Taki is here. She doesn’t know how but she _knows_ he’s here right now.

And then there’s her voice calling her name, echoing like a long-forgotten promise – a promise her soul remembers even if her mind does not and she’s shouting back. She calls his name like it’s something precious, it’s something important, she wills all her emotion into his name. Because it is important. He is important.

She hears Taki calling to her and she calls back, shouting as she runs along the lip of the crater. She feels something pulling her to him, that same feeling of longing that overcame her in her dreams before she met him.

There’s another name lurking in the edges of her mind – in the same corner that used to dream of dark hair, green eyes and a kind smile – and she’s afraid she won’t find him, feels so close yet so far from him all at once.

Then in the blink of an eye, they’re both there.

“Mitsuha,” he speaks her name with reverence and so much emotion.

They stand frozen in the glow of the golden hour closer than they’ve ever been.

“Taki. Taki. Taki.” She repeats his name as if it will breathe life into him. “You’re really here! Taki.”

Tears blur her vision as she rests her hands on his chest. She’s so happy, so so happy. And for a second there is a flash of another moment, tears of joy on her face as she falls through the sky, green eyes and dark hair and so much joy she could drown in it.

“I came to see you.” he says calmly with an easy smile, “It wasn’t easy because you were very far away.”

She looks up wiping the tears off her face, “But how…? At that moment, I…” she trails of still high on his presence.

“I drank from your _kuchikamisake_.”

“You… You drank it!” she says backing away from him, mortified, “You idiot! Pervert!”

The embarrassment is still there, but she can’t deny that it feels right in a strange way. Like she’s already a part of him.

It’s easy to talk to him, easier than she would’ve thought based on their messages to each other but he feels familiar and comforting in the same way temple duties feel, not stifling but rather like a warm embrace.

She catches sight of her hair tie and her heart swells when he tells her he’s kept it for such a long time, even if he didn’t know her yet when she gave it to him. Then they’re back to laughing together and she can feel the way her cheeks hurt from smiling. When was the last time she felt this carefree?

Their moment is broken as the comet cruises across the sky. She still has something to do, the fading light a reminder of their limited time. It feels too permanent of a goodbye.

“Hey, Mitsuha,” he says taking a pen out of his pocket and reaching for her hand, “so we don’t forget it when we wake up.” he’s cradling her hand now and she sees flashes of a boy running through a marketplace clutching her hand. “Let’s write our names.”

His touch makes a tingling sensation run up her arm, wholly different from the tickling of the pen across on her palm as he writes. She looks into his eyes, they’re a clear blue like the lake and she gets the impression they should be green but then he pushes the pen into her hand and all she can see is his warm smile and his outstretched hand.

She barely manages a single stroke before their time is up.

Separated as they are by time she doesn’t hear the promise he makes, but it resonates in her soul _wherever you are in the world I’ll find you no matter what_ mixes with _can we meet again?_ And tightens the knots of a thread neither of them knew was there.

Even as her new name fades from his memory – but nothing is ever really forgotten, is it? – taking the rest of her with it his promise binds them closer together.

**_Musubi._ **

_But… I am always looking for something. Or someone. That feeling consumes me…_

She forgets who it was, but they were important, there’s an ache from deep in her soul. She’s lost him, _forgotten him_ so many times already.

She looks at her hand – _so we don’t forget when we wake up_ echoes in her head but who said it, _who said it?_ – but what’s written there isn’t a name.

She cries cradling _I love you_ to her face as she damns them – this doesn’t help me find you, idiot, this isn’t _your name_.

And she cries as she runs to her father with newfound resolve because names are _important_ and she’s forgetting a _really important one_. But it does give her the strength she needs to carry on, it tells her what she knows deep in her soul but hadn’t heard in such a long time.

 _You were always so kind_ , she thinks and can’t figure out where it comes from or who the thought is for but she holds on until her father has issued the evacuation notice.

_I’m always looking for something. This feeling has consumed me for a long time._

The years pass and they forget, the memories of the switches and each other fading until nought but the feelings remain, his strange fixation with the tragedy of Itomori is fleeting and the hole in his life remains.

Sometimes he’ll be drawn into melancholy by some innocuous detail, the couple with strangely familiar mannerisms in the café, the impression of a red ribbon in a familiar bridge, even a glimpse of Itomori’s skyline makes his chest constrict painfully.

It’s a day like any other when they lock eyes. A slew of images he can’t quite hold on to flood his senses, time slows down in that second, stretching into infinity while they look at each other and then she’s gone; taken in another direction by the train and he’s left grasping at the memories that surfaced, like trying to fish barehanded, he is left with only impressions of emotions, water slipping through his fingers as they’re carried in opposite directions.

He flies out of the station, pulled through the streets by some urge he can’t quite name, following it desperately lest he lose it again, carried away by the current, a thread of time severed to never be found again.

****

**_Musubi._ **

He turns the corner and she’s _there_. At the top of the stairs, this time no images are flashing through his mind, but he can feel a sense of fullness, of completion, that he’s never experienced in his life.

He walks up the stairs and she walks down them, he has half a mind to keep walking and get back to the train but something compels him to turn around – _he won’t miss her again_.

He braces himself and turns to ask if they’ve met, there are tears in her eyes as she tells him she thought so too and now he’s crying too, next to this stranger – but she isn’t a stranger, his mind supplies, and he feels like he’s falling through the sky and he’s just recovered something precious, something integral to him.

“Can I know your name?” they both ask at the same time and something in him sings to give it to her. Names are important, they are powerful, but he feels as though he can trust his to her, as though he already has.

_It happens to me every once in a while. And whatever I was dreaming I can never remember._

Memories are sitting just outside her reach, there but not close enough to grab yet meeting him feels like coming home.

She looks at him and feels safe, elated. It’s as if the pieces of a puzzle have been put together, whole at last.

**_Musubi._ **

It begins with a girl and a river and the promise they make to each other, it’s how they weave around each other, time and time again through life and death.

It starts with a girl and a boy and their lives through each other, it’s how they search and come together.

It starts with things they don’t remember, but never truly forgot, binding them together, a part of each other as much as themselves.

It ends with a girl and a boy and the future they weave in tandem.

It ends with the names that bind them to each other.

**Author's Note:**

> So I was actually really nervous about this one, I love both of these movies a lot and I was worried I wouldn't do them justice but I'm happy with the finished product. When the idea of Mitsuha and Taki being Chihiro and Haku first came to my mind I'd just finished a Spirited Away rewatch and I'm a sucker for lost love finding each other again so I went ahead and did this. Thank you for giving this a chance!!


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